WHEN it comes to training courses Neil Evans did not choose the easiest of options.

Not content with 12 months becoming a Royal Marine commando, arguably the toughest boot camp in the world, a few years later he studied to get his chartered accountancy qualifications, one of the longest and most arduous study programmes.

The mental and physical training appears to have stood the 41-year-old in good stead, though, as today he is in charge of one of the UK's fastestgrowing companies, directory enquiries provider 118UK. From a standing start in 2000 it now handles enquiry services for customers of cable TV company Telewest and mobile-phone networks Vodafone and O&#xB2;.

More significantly, since the 17th of this month it offers directory enquiries services to landline phone users following the end of BT's monopoly.

Accompanied by a publicity blitz which has seen 118UK's new number on television advertisements and billboards across the country - 11 88 88 - it is a busy time for Mr Evans and the wholly Welsh-based company.

To meet the vast increase in

600. the number of calls it is in the process of doubling the workforce at its headquarters in Cardiff city centre from 300 to

A second call centre in Orchard Street, Swansea, has also just come online and this will employ a further 300 people.

Mr Evans, general manager, said, "We are on a very steep recruitment curve, but we are more than ready.

"We have been steadily building up our people and processes ahead of the deregulation of directory enquiries.

"We are very excited, too, and from the positive feedback we have received so far we are going to be giving BT a real run for its money.

"We are a very young, lean and ambitious company, confident that we offer the vest best service."

Mr Evans, born and bred in Haverfordwest, where he and his young family still live, went to the local grammar school before studying geography and astrology at Kings College in London.

A keen fitness enthusiast, he then decided to join the Royal Marine Commandos "for a bit of fun".

"It was fantastic," he said. "I signed up for four years, for a bit of fun more than anything, but the training really was a shocker: a whole 12 months, the longest military training in the world, and it was tough.

"I was 21, though. There were some lads who were 16 and had never been out of their home down before and suddenly they have all this discipline, so it was a lot harder for them."

After passing the baptism by fire Mr Evans was stationed in Scotland and Norway, helping

to protect the northern flank of Nato during the Cold War.

"It was a bit cold at times," he said.

"I had two years of that and then my last year was spent training up the next new recruits.

"It was a fantastic experience, but a single man's life.

"By then I was married and wanted to move back to Wales - my wife is also from Haverfordwest - so I had to find a new career."

Mr Evans chose accountancy and started with Deloitte & Touche in Cardiff.

When he and wife Emma started a family they both wanted to move back to West Wales, so he took up the job of group finance director with Greens, one of the oldest Land Rover dealerships in Britain.

Mr Evans stayed in this position for six years before joining in 2000 the then embryonic 118UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Irish group Conduit.

"I met up with the guys from Conduit and they told me about their directory enquiries `green field' idea for 118UK," he said.

"I was swept away by their enthusiasm and ambition.

"I started as finance director and then was promoted to general manager, the equivalent of the MD's job.

"The company could have chosen anywhere in the UK for its headquarters, but Cardiff fitted the bill perfectly.

"In Hodge House in the city centre we found the perfect building.

"The company policy is that our offices should be in busy city centres so that our staff can do something more interesting in their lunch hour than smoke a cigarette or go to the burger van.

"Our second office in Swansea in Orchard Street is also in the city centre."

When Mr Evans is not working or commuting from Pembrokeshire to Cardiff he still maintains an intensive keep-fit schedule.

Once a Royal Marine commando always a Royal Marine commando: he likes to run the occasional marathon.